Helmut Rechenberg (born November 6, 1937, in Berlin; died November 10, 2016, in Munich) was a German physicist and science historian. Rechenberg studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: link=no, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of ...

and graduated in 1964. At Munich, his work was in experimental physics, studying the magnetism of solids. He moved to the

Max Planck Institute for Physics The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is a physics institute in Munich, Germany that specializes in high energy physics and astroparticle physics. It is part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and is also known as the Werner Heisenberg Institut ...

in Munich, where he became

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...

's doctoral student. In 1968, he graduated with a doctorate on

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles a ...

. From 1970 to 1972 he worked at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, collaborating with George Sudarshan on quantum field theory and with

Jagdish Mehra Jagdish Mehra (April 8, 1931 – September 14, 2008) was an Indian-American historian of science. Academic career Mehra was educated at Allahabad University, the Max Planck Institut für Physik and the University of California at Los Angeles a ...

on science history. He then returned to Germany and the Max Planck Institute, from which he officially retired in 2002. His six-volume work with

on the history of quantum mechanics has been described as "an extraordinary amount of painstaking scholarship". Rechenberg also co-edited Werner Heisenberg's collected works and from 1977 headed the MPI's Werner Heisenberg Archive. After retiring, he wrote a two-volume biography of Heisenberg. From 1991 to 2006, he was also a board member of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft's Physics History Association.

External links

''Quantum Mechanics on the Move'' film

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rechenberg, Helmut 1937 births 2016 deaths German physicists Historians of science Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty